India story! A man named Nakabandi (37) is married to a woman named Gauri (23). Gauri complained to Nakabandi that a man from their village, named Anish (21), had tried to sexually assault her. Nakabandi, obviously furious, takes this to the community headman, Ghosal (52). After waying the evidence, Ghosal decides that the complaint is genuine, and issues his sentence: as compensation for the attempted assault on his wife, Nakabandi is given permission to rape Anish's sister (13). Which he then does, dragging her out of her house and apparently doing the do right there in the village common area in front of many onlookers.

のほも is such a good word?? the concept is kind of hard to fully get across in translation, but basically it means a feeling of pure, deep, platonic affection, and i think thats beautiful

That seems horrifying but the fact that we're hearing these stories at all is actually small indicators of a broader cultural change in India. There's been a critical mass of educated Indian women for a while now and a lot of women over there are really starting to work together to fight this sort of thing.

I mean, this is hardly good news as an individual story, but I'm actually pretty hopeful about India in the future.

This is a great little piece that basically goes through the history of which gender was seen as more "passionate" and goes over how the modern idea of the man as the intemperate 'sex crazed' gender is a relatively recent change, whereas historically this role fell to women. Really neat read and not overlong.

de Guzman's article also links to a 2013 post called Comics Guys, Harassment, and Missing Stairs by Jay Rachel Edidin, which itself links back to a post called The Missing Stair by somebody using the name Cliff Pervocracy (and, as you might expect from a post by a guy named Cliff Pervocracy, that last link may be NSFW, more due to its URL and tagline than any content in the post itself).

Cliff Pervocracy wrote:Have you ever been in a house that had something just egregiously wrong with it? Something massively unsafe and uncomfortable and against code, but everyone in the house had been there a long time and was used to it? "Oh yeah, I almost forgot to tell you, there's a missing step on the unlit staircase with no railings. But it's okay because we all just remember to jump over it."

Some people are like that missing stair.

I think de Guzman's post is good; it points out an institutional problem and strongly advocates that harassers not only be exposed but fired.

My biggest problem is that, in the entire post, the only harasser she names is Scott Allie.

Here's the passage where she links to Edidin's post:

Jennifer de Guzman wrote:In a scathing essay written in 2013 in response to cartoonist Tess Fowler outing a harasser, former Dark Horse editor Jay Rachel Edidin spoke of “missing stairs.” Those who know where the missing stairs are can step over them. Those who don’t, fall in.

It’s time to let everyone know where the missing stairs are — and to build new stairs.

Okay, but if that's your stance, why do I have to click on the link (which, incidentally, is broken in de Guzman's article; I fixed it in the quote above) to see that the harasser Tess Fowler outed is Brian Wood?

Here's another passage:

Jennifer de Guzman wrote:Another prominent publisher is attempting to woo young readers, especially young girls, even as it employs an editor who has a history of being accused of sexual harassment.

She doesn't provide any other information on what publisher or editor she's talking about. A trip to the duckmobile turns up a post by Alex de Campi indicating that the publisher is DC but not naming the editor, and a post at The Outhousers suggesting that it's Eddie Berganza but, again, not actually saying his name:

Jude Terror wrote:Which senior editor is de Campi talking about, and does his name rhyme with Tony Danza? Well, we can't answer that, because she didn't say, but you can take a look at the credits in a Superman or Wonder Woman book and take your own guess.

I can, unfortunately, understand why industry pros like de Campi, Edidin, d'Orazio, et al are reluctant to name harassers, and why people speaking up like Harris and Fowler is the exception rather than the rule. Criticizing powerful people in your industry has consequences, up to and including needing to find a new industry to work in -- and it paints a target on you that pretty much guarantees you're going to be subjected to more harassment, from fanboys who don't want to hear criticisms of creators, publishers, or comics they like.

But it's strange to me that, in an article explicitly about the need to expose harassers, de Guzman would choose to hide Brian Wood's name behind a link and not even name DC, let alone Berganza himself.

The cynical guess would be that CA's editors or corporate parent are worried about losing access or exposing themselves to legal liabilities, but on Wood, at least, that sure doesn't look like the case; CA had no trouble putting "Brian Wood" and "sexual harassment" in the same headline back in 2013, and in fact the site's coverage of Wood seems to have completely died off after that piece (at least, judging by the Brian Wood tag). Granted, the site's changed editors several times since then, and had just recently changed owners when that post was written, so perhaps there are stricter guidelines there now? Hard to say.

Harder still to say in the case of Bleeding Cool, which referred to the same breast-groping incident in 2012 as de Campi did but, like her, did not name Berganza as the harasser. BC has made it pretty clear over the years that it really doesn't give a fuck about ruffling publishers' feathers, and indeed referred to Berganza's "indiscretions" in an article just two weeks later.

There's probably a feeling of tawdry gossip around this type of story, too -- "Did you hear what so-and-so did?" And I'm sure there are people who are just interested in that element of the story, who just want to hear about celebrities (for some values of "celebrities") behaving badly.

But that's not what this is about. de Guzman and Comics Alliance are right: serial harassers should not be sheltered, should not be allowed to continue to harass. But if that's their stance, they shouldn't be part of that sheltering; they should publish those names. If de Guzman believes that these harassers should be fired -- and she says she does, and I'm inclined to think that she's right -- then she should be willing and able to say who should be fired and why.

It's so weird to me because if there's one gender that would pay a massive premium to use products not "for" the other one, it's men. I've never known a woman to recoil in disgust at the thought of using "men's" things of any kind.

Also boys' underwear is the one thing that costs more than girls' which just proves that we live in Bizarro World.